Tips and Techniques
As time permits, I'll add more and more to this page. Thirty-odd years of teaching experience is a lot to sort through!
People You Should Know
Most everything I know about working with bands I learned from great teachers and composers. Here are people and resources everyone working in the teaching of instrumental music should know:
Stephen Melillo - composer, clinician, conductor, and my musical inspiration! I've been fortunate to meet a few true geniuses in my life, and Steve is one of them! After playing his music, a lot of the other current concert band music will sound dull and lifeless to you!
Ed Lisk - the man! If you have not seen his books and video, you need to. Published by GIA, below.
Barry Green and the Inner Game of Music - this will transform your teaching if you've never tried it!
GIA publications - great resources for music teachers, including the "Teaching Music Through Performance In Band" series.
Antonio Garcia's improv books, "Cutting the Changes" Tony is a brilliant writer, composer, performer, and teacher and runs the jazz program at Virginia Commonwealth University.
I've also had the good fortune to be able to work with some great composers and performers, whom I can recommend to you for clinics and commissions without reservation:
Steve Wiest - jazz ensemble
Reber Clark - concert band
James Curnow - concert band
Jeff Jarvis - jazz ensemble
Jim Martin - jazz ensemble
Denis DiBlasio - jazz ensemble
Brian Torff - jazz ensemble
Doug Beach - jazz ensemble
Antonio Garcia - jazz ensemble
Small Jazz Publishers
While you probably know all the big publishers, there are a few small publishers that have some really good material. I worked with three high school jazz bands in my school that met every day and performed at least 4-5 times a year, so we went through over 60 pieces of music each school year! Here are some of my favorite small publishers -
Heritage Music Press
Smart Chart Music
Matrix Music (now with Jalen Music)
Jim Martin's pdfjazzmusic.com
And the "granddaddy" of them all, Kendor Music/Doug Beach Music!
Free Stuff
Scales and arpeggios | Concert band rhythm sheets | Jazz band rhythm sheets | Blues licks in F | 2 bar blues licks
General Tips
Listen down; listen back
This first one is pretty basic, but you'll be surprised how many times I talk to kids who don't know anything about it. It has to do with focusing the listening in an ensemble. It works in any instrumental ensemble, and the larger, the more important it is. It's a simple rule:
Listen down; listen back.
Listen down to the lowest voices of the ensemble for pitch. They are more solid and closer to the fundamental, and the upper voices absolutely must listen to them to adjust pitch. In a concert band, that would usually be the tubas and (to a lesser degree) the low reeds. Stephen Melillo says that concert bands lack a fundamental because the tubas actually play an octave higher than orchestral string basses; that's why he adds a PAD BASS to his scores. I've used it with my groups and he's absolutely right - it does improve the pitch center of the band. (When you go to his site, go to "Tools," then to "PAD BASS and STORMsystem."
Listen back to the voices located furthest back in the ensemble. If you are a trumpet player in the back row of a big band, you can't adjust pitch to the saxophone section - you can't hear them well enough, if at all. The saxes have to listen back to you and adjust. Let's say a trumpet player and an alto player have a unison solo line, and the trumpet player is a little flat...the alto CANNOT FIX IT! The "fixing" has to be done before the performance, because the trumpet player won't hear you trying to pull the two of you up to pitch. It can't be done!
Oh, and while I'm on this topic of pitch correction or matching (the terms I use instead of "tuning"): electronic tuning devices are like GPS: they can get you to the ballpark but you have to find your seat on your own. Too many kids (and even some directors, unfortunately, it seems to me) think using a digital tuner to get ONE NOTE in tune means you're OK...therefore causing the kid to NOT listen after that!
I recommend that in rehearsals that you DO NOT USE an electronic tuner at all. If you have a PAD BASS, as Steve Melillo suggests, adjust to that. If you don't, use the electronic device to tune the tubas or lowest voices in the ensemble, then have the rest of the group adjust pitch to them. Save the electronic tuner for the practice room and the private lesson, where it should be used A LOT.
In my jazz rehearsals we adjusted to a (digital) piano A in octaves and then a B flat (take the rhythm section out for this one), and really worked on matching pitch within sections. Some days we get the bear, and some days the bear gets us! We only used electronic tuners when someone was way out and they needed to see visually where the pitch is, or before a concert when we were trying to get three bands ready to go in the same room and it was pretty chaotic.
Musing about making concerts "interesting."
Put yourself mentally in the audience at one of your concerts. At what point would you become bored? Could you say you were honestly enthralled from beginning to end? (Maybe you could. If so, that's cool.) If not, what changes could you make, in programming, sequencing, or presentation that might help keep your audience focused? I didn't say entertained - that may be something different entirely. I'm not talking about the "circus" aspects of musical performances. Some directors think that's the way to keep an audience involved. But I wanted my audience members to be focused on the performance, in such a way that they couldn't wait to find out what would happen next! Sometimes it works better than others. Still, think back to a concert from this past year. If you were a parent, how would you feel? Like you were there as an obligation to your kid? Because the concert is actually interesting? What would make you come back for the next concert?
A friend of mine who is a nationally known and respected band director recently commented on Facebook that his impression of early-season DCI drum corps shows was that a lot of the latter half of the shows were GNDN. That's what Art Director Matt Jeffries labeled on pipes in the engineering spaces of the Enterprise from the original Star Trek series. It stands for "Goes Nowhere, Does Nothing." He's right about the DCI shows. At that point in the season I'll bet a lot of shows don't have the focus they need yet to be interesting from beginning to end. Dedicated drum corps audience members know that the shows are kind of a "work in progress" until the first week of August - and then there might still be that Saturday Night Surprise!
I've told kids for years we should do what we could to make performances interesting. That word encompasses a lot of different things. I can't possibly list every way you can help to do this, but I'll mention a couple. Later maybe I'll try to discuss more in another post.
First, many directors are stuck in a rut in programming. They program the pieces they do for the wrong reasons. Some of them, particularly younger directors, don't even take into account the ability level of the ensemble! For years and years I told student teachers that the most important job they had as educators was to choose appropriate literature. When I was a department chair I saw how other departments chose textbooks, and it often was a long and arduous process. We create our textbooks anew every year! That takes time and effort!
So here are a few thoughts about programming. First, pacing: many concerts are built without regard for giving the audience's ears a rest. Concert bands play some pretty heavy stuff today and that demands intense concentration from the audience. Even those with little musical experience will find listening to some of the more complex and sophisticated pieces in the wind repertoire to be demanding. (And so will the band, remember!) This is why Sousa is still revered - he was a master of programming. No, you don't need to follow up every "big" piece with a march! That worked for Sousa in his cultural context. Marches are useful and should be performed, but they should not be used in programming today the way they were a hundred years ago. Still, it's worth considering what follows the big, heavy piece in the program. Professional orchestras often don't get this, either, and some programs are really heavy, beating their audience's mental abilities to focus into submission.
What would be a good choice to follow a heavy piece? Sometimes it just means a shorter and contrasting work. A longer, darker, piece that is not clearly in major or minor mode takes a lot out of the audience. Follow it with something short, brighter, and major. If it's one of those pieces that's really complex and roars to a conclusion, you can follow it with a short, aria-like piece, maybe in a minor key. Someone - and I'm sorry I cannot recall who - once told me all music is either songs or dances - so follow a song with a dance, or a dance with a song, for contrast. (You get it, right? Lyrical or rhythmic?) It's like cleansing the palate before the next course of the meal.
Where does the "big" piece go in the program? I tend to put it about halfway to two-thirds of the way back. That gives the group some material to settle in on, perhaps of less difficulty, so the pitch levels out and the performers get used to the acoustics of the room. Then after the big one, follow up with something light and then something that can bring the concert to a triumphant conclusion. Rarely can you end on the "big" piece with the music that is being written by most of today's composers.
In short, think of the concert as a multi-movement work, or, even better, as a multi-act play. Any play or musical worth its salt has a shorter second act than the first, and (usually) ties up all the loose ends. Study how films are paced. Study how TV shows are paced. Those media are programming your audiences to expect certain things. A jumbled collection of pieces of music is hard for them to comprehend, believe it or not. It may be an unconscious thing, but I've found that audiences liked my concerts better when I tried to pay attention to these things.
One other thought having to do with difficulty of the pieces you play. I have heard so very many groups that could just barely play the notes of the pieces they program, and they feel they are doing the music justice. Personally I would rather hear a group perform a piece a half to a grade level below that and play the crap out of it, squeezing every bit of phrasing and interpretation out of every line. So many groups I hear just don't shape lines at all, it's sad. They feel that's how music should sound, technically correct but stiff and lifeless. W. Francis McBeth wrote a truly excellent book, "The Effective Performance of Band Music" (it's available here), in which he discusses which contemporary composers (at the time he wrote it) were primarily classicists and which were primarily romanticists. I hear a lot of bands that play as if every piece was written by a classicist composer. I ask you: do you know? Have you studied the composer enough to find out? Research today is far easier than it has ever been. Composers go out of their way to be accessible. Searching for multiple performances of a piece is relatively easy for all but the most obscure or newest compositions. Pay attention to what the composer has to say. There are also several great books on interpretation in which contemporary composers are interviewed.
Way back in 1980, when dinosaurs roamed the earth, I wrote to a composer who lived in Toronto. We were doing one of his pieces. One Sunday I was surprised when he called me on the phone! He was so impressed that we wanted to know what he thought about his music that he called me! It sure wasn't as easy as it is today with email.
I say it again: I would rather hear a group really nail a piece that's a little less technically difficult, rather than hope and pray they can hold together to get to the end of a harder work. And I'll mention the elephant in the room: conductor ego. "My band is working on _________." Great. I suppose when directors get together that can give you the warm fuzzy. But if most of the kids can't play it, or you have to pull back and only work on three pieces for three months to do it, it is really worth it? (That brings up a topic for another essay.) Rule of thumb: if you think you are still going to be fighting notes and rhythms two weeks before the performance, you shouldn't do it. Do something that allows you to spend those last two weeks refining the interpretation, learning to be sensitive musicians. Maybe your band director friends will sneer. But your kids will be musicians, not just trained animals - and that's what it's all about, right?
A few things to watch out for when designing and preparing your contest show
As I was in the process of writing the marching band arranging book I recalled a number of things I've seen done time and time again by inexperienced but well-meaning high school directors. Here are some things I think you should avoid, in no particular order.
Remember that weather changes. I've seen quite a few shows that seemed to have been conceived for 70 degrees Fahrenheit, no wind, low humidity and a light breeze. Here in the Midwest we get a very wide range of temperatures starting about October 1, anything from 40 degrees to 90. By the first week of November 70 degrees is just not in the cards - 40-50 would be the best we could generally hope for. Brass players in particular have a lot of trouble playing in the upper register when the temperature drops. I'e heard groups early in the season sound pretty good, with soloists who can play their solos acceptably, but by the end of the season it's completely impossible because of the environment. This is most apparently in small groups, of course, where each individual performer is so very important to the success of the ensemble. Same thing with guard, by the way - I know you wouldn't write guard work too safe, but remember that ours is an outdoor activity. (You guys who perform in domes at the end of the season have a whole different set of issues, most of which are acoustical.) I've judges Championships in a couple of states where the weather in late October was awful - rain, sleet, low temperatures, often a combination of all the above. Some of the most successful groups were those who expected poor conditions and planned for them when creating the show. We want to push our kids to achieve more, but sometimes more is just getting the show done without falls or collisions, when the weather truly sucks.
Don't expect that performing on artificial turf will make everything right, either. Sure, you avoid mud and (most of the) chuckholes high school grass fields have by the end of the season. But depending on the type of turf, the age of the installation, and how the field drains, artificial turf is just as slippery and dangerous as natural grass. One year I actually saw bands that had trouble - in good weather conditions, mind you - who were so used to artificial turf that they had trouble performing on a natural grass field. Some field and weather conditions can't be planned for, but a lot of them can - don't forget about conditions in October and November when you are creating the show in the spring.
Don't put your most inexperienced performers in positions where they can be dangerous. That doesn't mean they shouldn't be challenged, but I see this in percussion sections in particular. I can't tell you the number of times I've seen batteries on the field with bass drummers smaller than the drums they carry. As a director myself, I know the political ramifications of putting an experienced kid on a part he (or she) feels is beneath his position/station in life. It takes some preparation to get all the performers to understand that sometimes individual egos and goals have to be put on hold in order to achieve group goals. (Come to think of it, that would be a good thing for directors to remember as well!) I've found there are certain places where the placement of an inexperienced performer is particularly dangerous:
- bass drums, especially the bottom-voice bass drum
- timpani
- second and third trumpet parts, without more experienced players there to help them.
The last one is very important. I still hear a lot of bands that obviously place all the experienced players on the top part or top two parts, and the voicing sounds very hollow and overbalanced on the top. Band members in their first year of marching generally have a more difficult time mastering simultaneous playing and marching, and if something has to go, it's the playing. Arrangers usually conceive chordal balance as being pretty much equal in all parts. If not, it is because a director has asked for the arranger to help solve a particular balance problem, like too many alto saxes or too few trumpets. Still, if there are three trumpet parts, somebody with projection has to be playing that third part...and very often that won't be the newest members of the ensemble.
The two things I talk most about on commentary recordings when I judge: balance problems among the various sections of the group, including amplification issues, and the need for more dynamic shaping and interpretation. No judge likes to harp on the same problem all through the show - we really don't - but sometimes when the amplification is out of control and we can't hear sections of the band at all we have to note that on the recording. Simply put, you cannot adjust amplification from the tower in rehearsal and expect it to be the same in the press box at someone else's school. You must get someone back far enough and high enough to tell what the balance really is. Got a kid doing sound? Give him a cell phone and a headset, and put a staff member up under the press box. I don't know of any place where that is not within the rules of the contest. (If it is prohibited someplace, please let me know and I'll note it here.) Out of balance electronics can destroy an otherwise excellent performance. I see it happen at least a couple of times every year.
A lot of arrangers don't notate every single nuance of dynamics because they don't have time, or you will never get the show from them. I try to notate everything I can, but I expect that, in general, the staff needs to teach performers to do basic shaping. For example, if the line rises, the line should be getting louder, and the opposite when the line goes down. Know if your source material is from a composer who was/is primarily a classicist or a romanticist (see above) and plan accordingly. I judged a very big show this past fall with some great bands, some quite large. The band that won was not the largest band - nor the band that had the most money for show design or props. It was the band that played with the most musical interpretation. It was quite refreshing to hear that band after listening to so many bands that played accurately, and played good arrangements, but did so without much musical contrast or feeling. I know what causes it - lack of rehearsal time, mainly. So we just try to get the show on the field, then if we have some time we clean, and the emphasis is on perfecting the performance. But perfecting the performance includes perfecting the interpretation. Don't let the show be colorless!
People You Should Know
Most everything I know about working with bands I learned from great teachers and composers. Here are people and resources everyone working in the teaching of instrumental music should know:
Stephen Melillo - composer, clinician, conductor, and my musical inspiration! I've been fortunate to meet a few true geniuses in my life, and Steve is one of them! After playing his music, a lot of the other current concert band music will sound dull and lifeless to you!
Ed Lisk - the man! If you have not seen his books and video, you need to. Published by GIA, below.
Barry Green and the Inner Game of Music - this will transform your teaching if you've never tried it!
GIA publications - great resources for music teachers, including the "Teaching Music Through Performance In Band" series.
Antonio Garcia's improv books, "Cutting the Changes" Tony is a brilliant writer, composer, performer, and teacher and runs the jazz program at Virginia Commonwealth University.
I've also had the good fortune to be able to work with some great composers and performers, whom I can recommend to you for clinics and commissions without reservation:
Steve Wiest - jazz ensemble
Reber Clark - concert band
James Curnow - concert band
Jeff Jarvis - jazz ensemble
Jim Martin - jazz ensemble
Denis DiBlasio - jazz ensemble
Brian Torff - jazz ensemble
Doug Beach - jazz ensemble
Antonio Garcia - jazz ensemble
Small Jazz Publishers
While you probably know all the big publishers, there are a few small publishers that have some really good material. I worked with three high school jazz bands in my school that met every day and performed at least 4-5 times a year, so we went through over 60 pieces of music each school year! Here are some of my favorite small publishers -
Heritage Music Press
Smart Chart Music
Matrix Music (now with Jalen Music)
Jim Martin's pdfjazzmusic.com
And the "granddaddy" of them all, Kendor Music/Doug Beach Music!
Free Stuff
Scales and arpeggios | Concert band rhythm sheets | Jazz band rhythm sheets | Blues licks in F | 2 bar blues licks
General Tips
Listen down; listen back
This first one is pretty basic, but you'll be surprised how many times I talk to kids who don't know anything about it. It has to do with focusing the listening in an ensemble. It works in any instrumental ensemble, and the larger, the more important it is. It's a simple rule:
Listen down; listen back.
Listen down to the lowest voices of the ensemble for pitch. They are more solid and closer to the fundamental, and the upper voices absolutely must listen to them to adjust pitch. In a concert band, that would usually be the tubas and (to a lesser degree) the low reeds. Stephen Melillo says that concert bands lack a fundamental because the tubas actually play an octave higher than orchestral string basses; that's why he adds a PAD BASS to his scores. I've used it with my groups and he's absolutely right - it does improve the pitch center of the band. (When you go to his site, go to "Tools," then to "PAD BASS and STORMsystem."
Listen back to the voices located furthest back in the ensemble. If you are a trumpet player in the back row of a big band, you can't adjust pitch to the saxophone section - you can't hear them well enough, if at all. The saxes have to listen back to you and adjust. Let's say a trumpet player and an alto player have a unison solo line, and the trumpet player is a little flat...the alto CANNOT FIX IT! The "fixing" has to be done before the performance, because the trumpet player won't hear you trying to pull the two of you up to pitch. It can't be done!
Oh, and while I'm on this topic of pitch correction or matching (the terms I use instead of "tuning"): electronic tuning devices are like GPS: they can get you to the ballpark but you have to find your seat on your own. Too many kids (and even some directors, unfortunately, it seems to me) think using a digital tuner to get ONE NOTE in tune means you're OK...therefore causing the kid to NOT listen after that!
I recommend that in rehearsals that you DO NOT USE an electronic tuner at all. If you have a PAD BASS, as Steve Melillo suggests, adjust to that. If you don't, use the electronic device to tune the tubas or lowest voices in the ensemble, then have the rest of the group adjust pitch to them. Save the electronic tuner for the practice room and the private lesson, where it should be used A LOT.
In my jazz rehearsals we adjusted to a (digital) piano A in octaves and then a B flat (take the rhythm section out for this one), and really worked on matching pitch within sections. Some days we get the bear, and some days the bear gets us! We only used electronic tuners when someone was way out and they needed to see visually where the pitch is, or before a concert when we were trying to get three bands ready to go in the same room and it was pretty chaotic.
Musing about making concerts "interesting."
Put yourself mentally in the audience at one of your concerts. At what point would you become bored? Could you say you were honestly enthralled from beginning to end? (Maybe you could. If so, that's cool.) If not, what changes could you make, in programming, sequencing, or presentation that might help keep your audience focused? I didn't say entertained - that may be something different entirely. I'm not talking about the "circus" aspects of musical performances. Some directors think that's the way to keep an audience involved. But I wanted my audience members to be focused on the performance, in such a way that they couldn't wait to find out what would happen next! Sometimes it works better than others. Still, think back to a concert from this past year. If you were a parent, how would you feel? Like you were there as an obligation to your kid? Because the concert is actually interesting? What would make you come back for the next concert?
A friend of mine who is a nationally known and respected band director recently commented on Facebook that his impression of early-season DCI drum corps shows was that a lot of the latter half of the shows were GNDN. That's what Art Director Matt Jeffries labeled on pipes in the engineering spaces of the Enterprise from the original Star Trek series. It stands for "Goes Nowhere, Does Nothing." He's right about the DCI shows. At that point in the season I'll bet a lot of shows don't have the focus they need yet to be interesting from beginning to end. Dedicated drum corps audience members know that the shows are kind of a "work in progress" until the first week of August - and then there might still be that Saturday Night Surprise!
I've told kids for years we should do what we could to make performances interesting. That word encompasses a lot of different things. I can't possibly list every way you can help to do this, but I'll mention a couple. Later maybe I'll try to discuss more in another post.
First, many directors are stuck in a rut in programming. They program the pieces they do for the wrong reasons. Some of them, particularly younger directors, don't even take into account the ability level of the ensemble! For years and years I told student teachers that the most important job they had as educators was to choose appropriate literature. When I was a department chair I saw how other departments chose textbooks, and it often was a long and arduous process. We create our textbooks anew every year! That takes time and effort!
So here are a few thoughts about programming. First, pacing: many concerts are built without regard for giving the audience's ears a rest. Concert bands play some pretty heavy stuff today and that demands intense concentration from the audience. Even those with little musical experience will find listening to some of the more complex and sophisticated pieces in the wind repertoire to be demanding. (And so will the band, remember!) This is why Sousa is still revered - he was a master of programming. No, you don't need to follow up every "big" piece with a march! That worked for Sousa in his cultural context. Marches are useful and should be performed, but they should not be used in programming today the way they were a hundred years ago. Still, it's worth considering what follows the big, heavy piece in the program. Professional orchestras often don't get this, either, and some programs are really heavy, beating their audience's mental abilities to focus into submission.
What would be a good choice to follow a heavy piece? Sometimes it just means a shorter and contrasting work. A longer, darker, piece that is not clearly in major or minor mode takes a lot out of the audience. Follow it with something short, brighter, and major. If it's one of those pieces that's really complex and roars to a conclusion, you can follow it with a short, aria-like piece, maybe in a minor key. Someone - and I'm sorry I cannot recall who - once told me all music is either songs or dances - so follow a song with a dance, or a dance with a song, for contrast. (You get it, right? Lyrical or rhythmic?) It's like cleansing the palate before the next course of the meal.
Where does the "big" piece go in the program? I tend to put it about halfway to two-thirds of the way back. That gives the group some material to settle in on, perhaps of less difficulty, so the pitch levels out and the performers get used to the acoustics of the room. Then after the big one, follow up with something light and then something that can bring the concert to a triumphant conclusion. Rarely can you end on the "big" piece with the music that is being written by most of today's composers.
In short, think of the concert as a multi-movement work, or, even better, as a multi-act play. Any play or musical worth its salt has a shorter second act than the first, and (usually) ties up all the loose ends. Study how films are paced. Study how TV shows are paced. Those media are programming your audiences to expect certain things. A jumbled collection of pieces of music is hard for them to comprehend, believe it or not. It may be an unconscious thing, but I've found that audiences liked my concerts better when I tried to pay attention to these things.
One other thought having to do with difficulty of the pieces you play. I have heard so very many groups that could just barely play the notes of the pieces they program, and they feel they are doing the music justice. Personally I would rather hear a group perform a piece a half to a grade level below that and play the crap out of it, squeezing every bit of phrasing and interpretation out of every line. So many groups I hear just don't shape lines at all, it's sad. They feel that's how music should sound, technically correct but stiff and lifeless. W. Francis McBeth wrote a truly excellent book, "The Effective Performance of Band Music" (it's available here), in which he discusses which contemporary composers (at the time he wrote it) were primarily classicists and which were primarily romanticists. I hear a lot of bands that play as if every piece was written by a classicist composer. I ask you: do you know? Have you studied the composer enough to find out? Research today is far easier than it has ever been. Composers go out of their way to be accessible. Searching for multiple performances of a piece is relatively easy for all but the most obscure or newest compositions. Pay attention to what the composer has to say. There are also several great books on interpretation in which contemporary composers are interviewed.
Way back in 1980, when dinosaurs roamed the earth, I wrote to a composer who lived in Toronto. We were doing one of his pieces. One Sunday I was surprised when he called me on the phone! He was so impressed that we wanted to know what he thought about his music that he called me! It sure wasn't as easy as it is today with email.
I say it again: I would rather hear a group really nail a piece that's a little less technically difficult, rather than hope and pray they can hold together to get to the end of a harder work. And I'll mention the elephant in the room: conductor ego. "My band is working on _________." Great. I suppose when directors get together that can give you the warm fuzzy. But if most of the kids can't play it, or you have to pull back and only work on three pieces for three months to do it, it is really worth it? (That brings up a topic for another essay.) Rule of thumb: if you think you are still going to be fighting notes and rhythms two weeks before the performance, you shouldn't do it. Do something that allows you to spend those last two weeks refining the interpretation, learning to be sensitive musicians. Maybe your band director friends will sneer. But your kids will be musicians, not just trained animals - and that's what it's all about, right?
A few things to watch out for when designing and preparing your contest show
As I was in the process of writing the marching band arranging book I recalled a number of things I've seen done time and time again by inexperienced but well-meaning high school directors. Here are some things I think you should avoid, in no particular order.
Remember that weather changes. I've seen quite a few shows that seemed to have been conceived for 70 degrees Fahrenheit, no wind, low humidity and a light breeze. Here in the Midwest we get a very wide range of temperatures starting about October 1, anything from 40 degrees to 90. By the first week of November 70 degrees is just not in the cards - 40-50 would be the best we could generally hope for. Brass players in particular have a lot of trouble playing in the upper register when the temperature drops. I'e heard groups early in the season sound pretty good, with soloists who can play their solos acceptably, but by the end of the season it's completely impossible because of the environment. This is most apparently in small groups, of course, where each individual performer is so very important to the success of the ensemble. Same thing with guard, by the way - I know you wouldn't write guard work too safe, but remember that ours is an outdoor activity. (You guys who perform in domes at the end of the season have a whole different set of issues, most of which are acoustical.) I've judges Championships in a couple of states where the weather in late October was awful - rain, sleet, low temperatures, often a combination of all the above. Some of the most successful groups were those who expected poor conditions and planned for them when creating the show. We want to push our kids to achieve more, but sometimes more is just getting the show done without falls or collisions, when the weather truly sucks.
Don't expect that performing on artificial turf will make everything right, either. Sure, you avoid mud and (most of the) chuckholes high school grass fields have by the end of the season. But depending on the type of turf, the age of the installation, and how the field drains, artificial turf is just as slippery and dangerous as natural grass. One year I actually saw bands that had trouble - in good weather conditions, mind you - who were so used to artificial turf that they had trouble performing on a natural grass field. Some field and weather conditions can't be planned for, but a lot of them can - don't forget about conditions in October and November when you are creating the show in the spring.
Don't put your most inexperienced performers in positions where they can be dangerous. That doesn't mean they shouldn't be challenged, but I see this in percussion sections in particular. I can't tell you the number of times I've seen batteries on the field with bass drummers smaller than the drums they carry. As a director myself, I know the political ramifications of putting an experienced kid on a part he (or she) feels is beneath his position/station in life. It takes some preparation to get all the performers to understand that sometimes individual egos and goals have to be put on hold in order to achieve group goals. (Come to think of it, that would be a good thing for directors to remember as well!) I've found there are certain places where the placement of an inexperienced performer is particularly dangerous:
- bass drums, especially the bottom-voice bass drum
- timpani
- second and third trumpet parts, without more experienced players there to help them.
The last one is very important. I still hear a lot of bands that obviously place all the experienced players on the top part or top two parts, and the voicing sounds very hollow and overbalanced on the top. Band members in their first year of marching generally have a more difficult time mastering simultaneous playing and marching, and if something has to go, it's the playing. Arrangers usually conceive chordal balance as being pretty much equal in all parts. If not, it is because a director has asked for the arranger to help solve a particular balance problem, like too many alto saxes or too few trumpets. Still, if there are three trumpet parts, somebody with projection has to be playing that third part...and very often that won't be the newest members of the ensemble.
The two things I talk most about on commentary recordings when I judge: balance problems among the various sections of the group, including amplification issues, and the need for more dynamic shaping and interpretation. No judge likes to harp on the same problem all through the show - we really don't - but sometimes when the amplification is out of control and we can't hear sections of the band at all we have to note that on the recording. Simply put, you cannot adjust amplification from the tower in rehearsal and expect it to be the same in the press box at someone else's school. You must get someone back far enough and high enough to tell what the balance really is. Got a kid doing sound? Give him a cell phone and a headset, and put a staff member up under the press box. I don't know of any place where that is not within the rules of the contest. (If it is prohibited someplace, please let me know and I'll note it here.) Out of balance electronics can destroy an otherwise excellent performance. I see it happen at least a couple of times every year.
A lot of arrangers don't notate every single nuance of dynamics because they don't have time, or you will never get the show from them. I try to notate everything I can, but I expect that, in general, the staff needs to teach performers to do basic shaping. For example, if the line rises, the line should be getting louder, and the opposite when the line goes down. Know if your source material is from a composer who was/is primarily a classicist or a romanticist (see above) and plan accordingly. I judged a very big show this past fall with some great bands, some quite large. The band that won was not the largest band - nor the band that had the most money for show design or props. It was the band that played with the most musical interpretation. It was quite refreshing to hear that band after listening to so many bands that played accurately, and played good arrangements, but did so without much musical contrast or feeling. I know what causes it - lack of rehearsal time, mainly. So we just try to get the show on the field, then if we have some time we clean, and the emphasis is on perfecting the performance. But perfecting the performance includes perfecting the interpretation. Don't let the show be colorless!